Well it has been a very long time since my last blogg and there is a very good reason for that. The reason is that I was so bloody plastered for days that I just couldn't focus on the computer keys. Then I spent almost a week trying to recover from all the physical and emotional torture I put myself through and writing a blogg took second place to me trying to stop my self from having panic attacks.
This may all seem very dramatic to you or you may think that I am exaggerating but I can assure you that from the 26th July when I left Chang Mai up until today I have been through a hurricane of self inflicted horror. I can just imagine the various looks crossing the various faces of my various friends and loved ones. Disappointment, anger, sadness, bewilderment but believe me I own all of those emotions and feelings and my face has shown all of them and many more over the last few days and once again it is all my own fault and doing.
It never fails to amaze me even now at 37years of age how little I know about myself. Surly by now I should realise that if that first sip of alcohol touches my lips then all hell will break loose. It is like setting the tigers amongst the vultures. For some reason I think after a few weeks or months of sobriety I will be able to have just a couple of beers or a couple of glasses of wine and I will be strong enough to leave it at that, but it never works like that for me. One drink always leads to a drunk...in my case anyway.
I decided to have a beer at the airport in Chang Mai Thailand while I was waiting for my flight to Bangkok. I told myself I would have two beers only and that is all I had and as I was walking down to board the flight I felt chuffed with myself. I felt a little pissed too as I hadn't drank anything for nearly two months but I was happy and merry skipping along towards the very pretty air hostess smiling at me with her dainty hands together in prayer. Then as I was just about to board the aircraft I noticed I didn't have my jacket, I ran back to the boarding gate and the hansom young boy checking the boarding passes told me to go and look for it but told me to be quick as the flight was due to depart, so I tore through the airport checking under seats, between peoples bags, inside toilet cubicles, in the bar but no bloody jacket.
I checked with the security staff who were about as useful as a pair of sunglasses on a bloke with one ear and with the hansom boy waving frantically at me from the gate I had to make my way onto the flight minus my jacket.
I was bloody gutted, I wanted to cry, it was the only pissin warm thing I had and it was pelting down with rainy season rain outside, but more than anything I was gutted because every time I drink alcohol I loose something. I just thought how fukin unfair is this I haven't drank for two months and I have two soddin beers and I loose my jacket. It was only a little grey cotton thing from Primark but I loved it, it was light and soft and the only warm thing I had and it was fukin gone.
By the time I arrived in Bangkok I had already decided that I was going to go out. I should have taken the loosing of the jacket scenario as a sign to stay the hell in but after two beers I wasn't interested in taking any notice of any warning sign,s the only signs I was interested in were the OPEN signs on bar doors.
That first night I really don't remember much about. I know I headed off down Kho San road and I went to buy some wax strips from Boots and lady things as you do and then I plonked myself at some bar where I met an English couple. I don't remember what the hell we talked about but I do remember dancing around and I took my boots off, I usually dance bare foot you can get into the groove more and I have vague flash backs of eating Pad Thai and sitting with some Spanish people but it is all a blur and I just cant piece it together. Waking up the next morning was horrific. Lying next to me was some random Spanish man that looked like a cross between Kurt Cobain and a mermaid, I had no idea what his name was and I thanked God that my jeans were still on but I realised that my Boots shopping had gone and so had my little leather ankle boots.
I had no idea how I got home and I still have no idea who in the hell was the long haired article that I had taken home with me. I was disgusted and I just sat there on my bed in my clothes from the night before listening while some Spanish hillbilly told me why he hates English people and I was was just thinking how I would love to swap him for my leather boots and my wax strips.
I have thought long and hard about wither or not I should tell you all this but to be honest I have decided to write a book next year about all of my travels over the last twenty years, with all of the sex and drugs and trouble and strife that a single woman can encounter or as in my case did encounter whilst travelling abroad alone, so you are going to hear it all anyway so there is no point me telling any fibs. I have decided to leave out the nitty gritty at this point as it brings me too much shame to even think about it but by next year I'm sure I will be able to talk about it without wanting to jump under the nearest Tuk Tuk.
Do I have regrets, do I feel ashamed, the answer to both of those questions is yes of course I bloody do but then I think well how many girls last Saturday night went home with a man they just met in a club and the answer is thousands. But that doesn't make me feel any better. I still feel like shite and I feel so pissed off with myself because all it was supposed to be was two beers for good behaviour and I had lost my jacket, my little leather ankle boots that looked so sexy with my new jeans, my wax strips and lady things and my nail varnish remover pads..now that is an expensive shag (that's if I had one).
I know my brother reads my blogg so Bren I am so so sorry that after all the years that I have worried you sick that I have once again tumbled head first into the biggest pile of horse shit imaginable and I have ruined all the hard work I have done over the last six months, all the praying and meditating all the yoga and detoxing has all gone up in hash smoke in minutes...I really am sorry : (
Once I had wrestled the long haired mermaid from Madrid out of my hotel room I decided that there was no way that I could remain in that room and risk catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror so I showered...thourally and went back out onto the streets of Bangkok.
It was on this day that I met Michael. Michael is a good man and as soon as I saw him sat alone at a table I was struck by how similar to my brother he was. We started talking and it was so bizarre because not only did he look like my brother but he had that same good, kind hearted spirit. Looking back now I'm sure God put Michael in my life that day to look after me because I started drinking again as soon as I woke up and I really did need looking after. Michael and I wondered around Bangkok and went for food and drank Margarita's and I told him all about my life and all the shit that has gone on and he listened and advised me and stopped me getting run over by cars when I would stumble into the road but when I woke the next morning I realised that I had lost my flip flops, the beautiful red parasol I had bought was torn in half and my gorgeous long fuchsia pink dress was torn to threads and black as soot. The dress was thrown into the bin along with the parasol and I through myself into the shower.
Now again you would think that that would be enough carnage for anyone to be involved in but no out I went again back into the underworld of Bangkok and drank again all day. I really can not understand why I do this, all I know is that when there is alcohol in my system, when I am still drunk I just carry on and on until I drink myself into unconsciousness. There is no point were I say to myself 'Jacqueline you have had enough, it's time to go home' I just don't have that at all. I think I am so scared of sobering up and having to face all the shit I have gotten myself into, so I want to put it off for as long as possible.
On this particular day I met two wonderful girls from England. They sat down next to me and we started talking. They were both so beautiful. One of them told me that her Dad had died a few weeks before and she had watched him die of cancer and as she told me big bubble tears fell off her long eyelashes, she was just so sweet and delicate and it made me realise how precious life is but that didn't make me stop drinking. The other girl was a wild little thing, she had this floaty pretty dress on and a purple and yellow baseball cap on turned backwards like a rap star and she told me she had just stolen it. I couldn't help but laugh but stealing things in Thailand, jeepers creepers you would be locked up for the rest of your natural and I was glad that I just lost things instead of stealing things...much healthier, you cant get locked up in a Thai jail for loosing your shoes.
We all got absolutely hammered and then we met two wonderful lovely guys from Israel and we all went to this wild bar on Kho San road with some singer with a guitar and me and the girls got on the stage and danced like it was the last night of our lives. I do remember having an amazing time dancing and twirling and swishing and swaying and I know everyone was clapping at us and people were getting up with us and dancing and I think we really did create a lot of fun because when we stopped dancing and left everyone in the bar stood up and clapped lol lol.
By this point we all decided we wanted to swim so we all went back to my hotel to swim in the roof pool but of course it was locked to stop piss heads like us from diving in the shallow end cracking our skulls open and spending the rest of our lives in wheelchairs so we all piled into my room.
I had my little portable DVD player playing the only decent CD I had, some dance music an ex boyfriend DJ of mine had done for me for my trip because all of my other CD's are Hare Krishna Cd's and chakra cleansing CD's from India and they really didn't suit the mood.
More alcohol was consumed and more craziness occurred and I woke for the third morning in Bangkok with different faces in my room and more things missing.
Another pair of shoes were gone and a scarf but somehow I had managed to get my boots waxing strips back. I had no idea where they had come from but the very lovely Amit from Israel said a barman in a reggae bar came running out of the bar after me waving a boots bag in the air the night before.
Amit actually was the nicest man I had met in a long time. He was so funny but he really liked my friend with the baseball cap turned backwards. They were sat talking for ages but she has a boyfriend back home so she told him she wasn't interested. I thought it was really sweet that he bought her a red rose and I thought it was shocking when she ripped the petals off it in front of him and throw them on the floor. I think that was when he started talking to me and that was fine with me he was a little sweetie with beautiful green eyes and a huge beard.
He told me that he had bought a huge rice cooker for his mom and it was packed into his back pack and I thought that was hilarious, I mean what young man goes back-packing around Asia and buys a rice cooker for their Mother.
He had all of this lovely quirkiness about him and sweetness and I thought he was so fresh and pure and honest. He made me laugh so much and was sweet and young and positive about the world and that really lifted my depressed mood.
I was sad saying goodbye to Amit, we hugged and clung to each other like Romeo & Juliet for 10 mins by the bus stand and the bus driver got really pissed off and almost dragged Amit off me and throw him in the back of the bus.
Before leaving Amit gave me a little sachet of washing powder which I think is hilarious and will keep forever. He bought a 100 sachet strip of washing powder because they were only 1 rupee each, he bought them in India and he loved the fact that they all had a huge 1 R on them and it blew him away how cheap they were. That is what I loved about him he had this real funny way of looking at things and he appreciated all these funny things. He is a very sweet boy and for a short time he made me very happy.
I would like to be able to say that when they left I went straight back to my room but I didn't. I sat on Kho San road again with some drunks I had met the day before. They were a group of men and woman that sit outside the same bar everyday and just get wasted and look wasted and as I thought I probably fitted the bill nicely I sat with them and drank some more beer.
Eventually I had the sense to go back to my room. I had actually drunk myself sober after four days.
I showered and packed all my things and cleaned my room and whilst rinsing my walls and floors of footprints and hand prints and other undesirable marks I couldn't help thinking that I wished that the soul and all its dark dirty corners was as easy to clean as white marble tiles..... but it just isn't.
So I have to be honest this is a rather edited and censored explanation of what happened in Bangkok but I really can not go into it all yet as I am still in the denial stage and I'm sure you all already think I'm a crazy bitch and need certifying.
I have been in Cambodia now for three days and I have stayed at home and ate lots of fruit and veggies and I have cried and prayed and I know I just have to start again, that's all I can do. I cant go doing a Kurt Cobain blowing my brains out in the greenhouse because I want to live. , I want to be an Auntie to my niece and nephew and I want to be a Mother so I just have to keep on getting up out of the shit and I have to keep on trying harder.
Love & Peace
Jacqueline x
This may all seem very dramatic to you or you may think that I am exaggerating but I can assure you that from the 26th July when I left Chang Mai up until today I have been through a hurricane of self inflicted horror. I can just imagine the various looks crossing the various faces of my various friends and loved ones. Disappointment, anger, sadness, bewilderment but believe me I own all of those emotions and feelings and my face has shown all of them and many more over the last few days and once again it is all my own fault and doing.
It never fails to amaze me even now at 37years of age how little I know about myself. Surly by now I should realise that if that first sip of alcohol touches my lips then all hell will break loose. It is like setting the tigers amongst the vultures. For some reason I think after a few weeks or months of sobriety I will be able to have just a couple of beers or a couple of glasses of wine and I will be strong enough to leave it at that, but it never works like that for me. One drink always leads to a drunk...in my case anyway.
I decided to have a beer at the airport in Chang Mai Thailand while I was waiting for my flight to Bangkok. I told myself I would have two beers only and that is all I had and as I was walking down to board the flight I felt chuffed with myself. I felt a little pissed too as I hadn't drank anything for nearly two months but I was happy and merry skipping along towards the very pretty air hostess smiling at me with her dainty hands together in prayer. Then as I was just about to board the aircraft I noticed I didn't have my jacket, I ran back to the boarding gate and the hansom young boy checking the boarding passes told me to go and look for it but told me to be quick as the flight was due to depart, so I tore through the airport checking under seats, between peoples bags, inside toilet cubicles, in the bar but no bloody jacket.
I checked with the security staff who were about as useful as a pair of sunglasses on a bloke with one ear and with the hansom boy waving frantically at me from the gate I had to make my way onto the flight minus my jacket.
I was bloody gutted, I wanted to cry, it was the only pissin warm thing I had and it was pelting down with rainy season rain outside, but more than anything I was gutted because every time I drink alcohol I loose something. I just thought how fukin unfair is this I haven't drank for two months and I have two soddin beers and I loose my jacket. It was only a little grey cotton thing from Primark but I loved it, it was light and soft and the only warm thing I had and it was fukin gone.
By the time I arrived in Bangkok I had already decided that I was going to go out. I should have taken the loosing of the jacket scenario as a sign to stay the hell in but after two beers I wasn't interested in taking any notice of any warning sign,s the only signs I was interested in were the OPEN signs on bar doors.
That first night I really don't remember much about. I know I headed off down Kho San road and I went to buy some wax strips from Boots and lady things as you do and then I plonked myself at some bar where I met an English couple. I don't remember what the hell we talked about but I do remember dancing around and I took my boots off, I usually dance bare foot you can get into the groove more and I have vague flash backs of eating Pad Thai and sitting with some Spanish people but it is all a blur and I just cant piece it together. Waking up the next morning was horrific. Lying next to me was some random Spanish man that looked like a cross between Kurt Cobain and a mermaid, I had no idea what his name was and I thanked God that my jeans were still on but I realised that my Boots shopping had gone and so had my little leather ankle boots.
I had no idea how I got home and I still have no idea who in the hell was the long haired article that I had taken home with me. I was disgusted and I just sat there on my bed in my clothes from the night before listening while some Spanish hillbilly told me why he hates English people and I was was just thinking how I would love to swap him for my leather boots and my wax strips.
I have thought long and hard about wither or not I should tell you all this but to be honest I have decided to write a book next year about all of my travels over the last twenty years, with all of the sex and drugs and trouble and strife that a single woman can encounter or as in my case did encounter whilst travelling abroad alone, so you are going to hear it all anyway so there is no point me telling any fibs. I have decided to leave out the nitty gritty at this point as it brings me too much shame to even think about it but by next year I'm sure I will be able to talk about it without wanting to jump under the nearest Tuk Tuk.
Do I have regrets, do I feel ashamed, the answer to both of those questions is yes of course I bloody do but then I think well how many girls last Saturday night went home with a man they just met in a club and the answer is thousands. But that doesn't make me feel any better. I still feel like shite and I feel so pissed off with myself because all it was supposed to be was two beers for good behaviour and I had lost my jacket, my little leather ankle boots that looked so sexy with my new jeans, my wax strips and lady things and my nail varnish remover pads..now that is an expensive shag (that's if I had one).
I know my brother reads my blogg so Bren I am so so sorry that after all the years that I have worried you sick that I have once again tumbled head first into the biggest pile of horse shit imaginable and I have ruined all the hard work I have done over the last six months, all the praying and meditating all the yoga and detoxing has all gone up in hash smoke in minutes...I really am sorry : (
Once I had wrestled the long haired mermaid from Madrid out of my hotel room I decided that there was no way that I could remain in that room and risk catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror so I showered...thourally and went back out onto the streets of Bangkok.
It was on this day that I met Michael. Michael is a good man and as soon as I saw him sat alone at a table I was struck by how similar to my brother he was. We started talking and it was so bizarre because not only did he look like my brother but he had that same good, kind hearted spirit. Looking back now I'm sure God put Michael in my life that day to look after me because I started drinking again as soon as I woke up and I really did need looking after. Michael and I wondered around Bangkok and went for food and drank Margarita's and I told him all about my life and all the shit that has gone on and he listened and advised me and stopped me getting run over by cars when I would stumble into the road but when I woke the next morning I realised that I had lost my flip flops, the beautiful red parasol I had bought was torn in half and my gorgeous long fuchsia pink dress was torn to threads and black as soot. The dress was thrown into the bin along with the parasol and I through myself into the shower.
Now again you would think that that would be enough carnage for anyone to be involved in but no out I went again back into the underworld of Bangkok and drank again all day. I really can not understand why I do this, all I know is that when there is alcohol in my system, when I am still drunk I just carry on and on until I drink myself into unconsciousness. There is no point were I say to myself 'Jacqueline you have had enough, it's time to go home' I just don't have that at all. I think I am so scared of sobering up and having to face all the shit I have gotten myself into, so I want to put it off for as long as possible.
On this particular day I met two wonderful girls from England. They sat down next to me and we started talking. They were both so beautiful. One of them told me that her Dad had died a few weeks before and she had watched him die of cancer and as she told me big bubble tears fell off her long eyelashes, she was just so sweet and delicate and it made me realise how precious life is but that didn't make me stop drinking. The other girl was a wild little thing, she had this floaty pretty dress on and a purple and yellow baseball cap on turned backwards like a rap star and she told me she had just stolen it. I couldn't help but laugh but stealing things in Thailand, jeepers creepers you would be locked up for the rest of your natural and I was glad that I just lost things instead of stealing things...much healthier, you cant get locked up in a Thai jail for loosing your shoes.
We all got absolutely hammered and then we met two wonderful lovely guys from Israel and we all went to this wild bar on Kho San road with some singer with a guitar and me and the girls got on the stage and danced like it was the last night of our lives. I do remember having an amazing time dancing and twirling and swishing and swaying and I know everyone was clapping at us and people were getting up with us and dancing and I think we really did create a lot of fun because when we stopped dancing and left everyone in the bar stood up and clapped lol lol.
By this point we all decided we wanted to swim so we all went back to my hotel to swim in the roof pool but of course it was locked to stop piss heads like us from diving in the shallow end cracking our skulls open and spending the rest of our lives in wheelchairs so we all piled into my room.
I had my little portable DVD player playing the only decent CD I had, some dance music an ex boyfriend DJ of mine had done for me for my trip because all of my other CD's are Hare Krishna Cd's and chakra cleansing CD's from India and they really didn't suit the mood.
More alcohol was consumed and more craziness occurred and I woke for the third morning in Bangkok with different faces in my room and more things missing.
Another pair of shoes were gone and a scarf but somehow I had managed to get my boots waxing strips back. I had no idea where they had come from but the very lovely Amit from Israel said a barman in a reggae bar came running out of the bar after me waving a boots bag in the air the night before.
Amit actually was the nicest man I had met in a long time. He was so funny but he really liked my friend with the baseball cap turned backwards. They were sat talking for ages but she has a boyfriend back home so she told him she wasn't interested. I thought it was really sweet that he bought her a red rose and I thought it was shocking when she ripped the petals off it in front of him and throw them on the floor. I think that was when he started talking to me and that was fine with me he was a little sweetie with beautiful green eyes and a huge beard.
He told me that he had bought a huge rice cooker for his mom and it was packed into his back pack and I thought that was hilarious, I mean what young man goes back-packing around Asia and buys a rice cooker for their Mother.
He had all of this lovely quirkiness about him and sweetness and I thought he was so fresh and pure and honest. He made me laugh so much and was sweet and young and positive about the world and that really lifted my depressed mood.
I was sad saying goodbye to Amit, we hugged and clung to each other like Romeo & Juliet for 10 mins by the bus stand and the bus driver got really pissed off and almost dragged Amit off me and throw him in the back of the bus.
Before leaving Amit gave me a little sachet of washing powder which I think is hilarious and will keep forever. He bought a 100 sachet strip of washing powder because they were only 1 rupee each, he bought them in India and he loved the fact that they all had a huge 1 R on them and it blew him away how cheap they were. That is what I loved about him he had this real funny way of looking at things and he appreciated all these funny things. He is a very sweet boy and for a short time he made me very happy.
I would like to be able to say that when they left I went straight back to my room but I didn't. I sat on Kho San road again with some drunks I had met the day before. They were a group of men and woman that sit outside the same bar everyday and just get wasted and look wasted and as I thought I probably fitted the bill nicely I sat with them and drank some more beer.
Eventually I had the sense to go back to my room. I had actually drunk myself sober after four days.
I showered and packed all my things and cleaned my room and whilst rinsing my walls and floors of footprints and hand prints and other undesirable marks I couldn't help thinking that I wished that the soul and all its dark dirty corners was as easy to clean as white marble tiles..... but it just isn't.
So I have to be honest this is a rather edited and censored explanation of what happened in Bangkok but I really can not go into it all yet as I am still in the denial stage and I'm sure you all already think I'm a crazy bitch and need certifying.
I have been in Cambodia now for three days and I have stayed at home and ate lots of fruit and veggies and I have cried and prayed and I know I just have to start again, that's all I can do. I cant go doing a Kurt Cobain blowing my brains out in the greenhouse because I want to live. , I want to be an Auntie to my niece and nephew and I want to be a Mother so I just have to keep on getting up out of the shit and I have to keep on trying harder.
Love & Peace
Jacqueline x
